Wickedly Wonderful

by Deborah Blake

  She and Fergus finished up the last of the tasks he’d given them and came over to join Marcus in the bow of the boat. He caught another whiff of strawberries and sunlight, although it should have been impossible to smell anything but sea and salt and fish guts. As always, it made his heart race, and he had to take a deep breath of briny air to clear his head.

  Fergus gave him a piercing look accompanied by a wry smile, and then gazed out over the churning ocean. “Does your father really think we will find fish out in this tempest?”

  Marcus sighed. “I don’t know if he believes it, or if he is just too stubborn to give up. Anyone with any sense either didn’t go out today or went back early, so if we catch anything, we’ll get prime dollar for it. I suspect he needs the money.” He eyed Beka, who wore a slightly guilty expression. “Either way, the fish haven’t been running in their usual patterns or showing up in the places they would normally be at this time of year, so I don’t know why he thinks bad weather is going to change anything.”

  Under his red hair, slicked back with rain until it looked much darker than usual and currently dripping down the back of his neck, Fergus’s face was thoughtful as he gazed at the watery surface before them.

  “There is truth in that, undeniably,” he said in the slightly formal way he had of speaking. Marcus thought it sounded like he came from some foreign country, except he didn’t have an accent. “We have noticed that as well. The fish are not where they are supposed to be, and they are turning up in the oddest spots instead.”

  “We?” Marcus asked, a little suspicious. “I thought you said you didn’t fish much.” Could the man be spying out his father’s fishing routes for some rival?

  Beka and Fergus exchanged wordless glances; Fergus blinked wetness out of his eyes with absurdly long lashes. “Er, us divers, I mean.”

  Uh-huh.

  Beka stirred restlessly beside him, distracting in her nearness. “If I can find us some fish, do you think your father will agree to go back in?”

  Marcus snorted. “Sure. Why, do you have some hidden up your sleeve?”

  Fergus rolled his eyes, gesturing at Beka’s skimpy attire. “And where in that ridiculous getup do you think she could hide so much as a pea?”

  Beka smacked his arm playfully, causing an electric buzz to zing through Marcus’s chest for a moment. “Not exactly,” she said.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much point to the question, then, does there?” He glowered at Beka, tired of the rain, the boat, and the memories that always seemed to haunt him on days like this. If he had a magic wand, he’d wave it and fill the hold with fish so he could go sit on the shore with a cold beer and try to forget.

  Surprisingly, Fergus’s normally merry face suddenly took on a look of alarm. “What are you thinking of, Baba?”

  “Baba?” Marcus said, looking from one to the other. “I thought your name was Beka.”

  “It’s kind of a nickname,” she said, kicking Fergus lightly with one bare foot. “We don’t usually use it in public.”

  Well, that answered that question, didn’t it? Not that he cared.

  Fergus cleared his throat. “So, Beka, how exactly did you plan to find these elusive fish?” He looked pointedly at Marcus, who got the curious feeling that there was some subtle communication going on that he was missing.

  Beka’s expression became serious, too, and she turned toward the open ocean as she spoke, so the wind nearly snatched her words away.

  “I’m going to ask someone who knows, of course,” she said, and leaned dangerously far over the bow.

  SEVEN

  BEKA GAVE A piercing whistle that she knew would travel a long way over the open water. At the same time, she added a silent magical call and sent it out in all directions. A few minutes later, she got an answer, as a pair of gray dorsal fins cutting their way through the equally gray waves headed rapidly in their direction.

  She heard a low chuckle from her left and a gasp of surprise from her right but ignored them both to pay attention to the two dolphins now keeping pace with the slowly moving ship. But she’d have to get closer if she was going to get any useful information. Marcus was going to have a fit.

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said, and before he could stop her, she grabbed one of the ropes they used to tie on to the dock and flung it over the side. She clambered down it, ignoring the splintery fibers that gnawed at her fingers, and the cold spray from the turbulent sea. Above her head, she caught a brief glimpse of Fergus, holding Marcus back when he would have climbed down after her. Good. She was already pushing the limits anyway. No point in having him discover she spoke fluent Dolphin.

  “Baba! Baba!” the dolphins chortled joyously, squirting water through their blowholes to add to the already raucous ocean spray that dampened Beka’s face and clothes.

  “Hello, my friends,” Beka responded, approximating the mammals’ whistles and clicks the best she could. “I am looking for some fish. Do you know where I can find some fish?”

  A few minutes later, she climbed back over the bow of the boat, her arms aching from hanging on to the rope. Rough hands hauled her the rest of the way onto the deck and set her down with a thud that rattled her teeth.

  “Are you out of your damned mind?” Marcus’s face was white and his body was as rigid as stone. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? What the hell were you thinking, climbing over the side of a moving boat in the middle of a storm?”

  Before she could answer, he swung around and stalked away from her, barely suppressed fury vibrating from his aura like a Human manifestation of the squall that raged around them.

  “I was fine,” she muttered to the air. “Jeez.”

  Chico detached himself from the shadow of the cabin, where he’d apparently been watching the entire time. Fergus nodded at him in greeting. Beka gave him a small, tight smile, still feeling the smart from Marcus’s scolding.

  “He was just worried about you, senorita,” Chico said, patting her on the arm. “You should not take his yelling so personal, eh? He has his reasons.”

  “What kind of reasons could justify him screaming at me like that?” Beka fumed. “I was perfectly safe.”

  Chico shrugged. “Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. What you did, perhaps it was a little foolhardy. Boats can be dangerous places.”

  Fergus slung one arm companionably around her shoulders, lending her some much-needed warmth. “You have to remember, Ba—Beka, not everyone knows how tough you are.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words.

  “You frightened him,” Chico said in his soft, quiet voice. “That is why he shouted at you.”

  He looked around to make sure Marcus was out of earshot. “When he was seventeen, his younger brother died in a storm much like this one, swept over the side of this very boat. It was the three of them and me, and some new idiota his father had hired because no one else wanted to work for such a difficult man. The boy, Kyle, was just fifteen. He loved the sea, and working on the Wily Serpent, and most of all, he worshiped his hermano. Followed Marcus around like a puppy, that one.”

  Beka tried to envision Marcus as a boy and failed. “What happened?”

  Chico gave a classic Latino shrug. “The new one, el estupido, he pull on the net at the wrong time. The boy, he fell in the water and got tangled up with the net. By the time we pulled him out, there was nothing anyone could do. The boy was muerto, yes? So you see, I think, why it was not so good for you to take such a chance as you did, seniorita.” He patted her on the shoulder again and walked away.

  “Well, crap,” Beka said. “I screwed up again.” She hadn’t thought about how it might look to Marcus; just jumped right in because she’d thought she’d figured out how to solve their problem. And ended up creating an even bigger one. Brenna was right; she was always leaping first and then thinking things through afterward.

  Fergus hugged her, tapping his pointy chin on the top of her head before letting her go. “You didn’t know about his brother,
Baba. It was not as though you tried to upset him on purpose.”

  “Yeah. Try telling him that.” Beka blinked back tears that vanished into the company of their raindrop brethren. She sighed. “Well, I suppose it would be foolish to waste the information, especially since Marcus will probably never let me on the boat again.”

  She ducked around the cabin and stuck her head inside. Marcus Senior was slumped down in his seat, but he straightened up when she knocked on the open door and came in.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “You can’t come hang out in here just because it’s getting a little wet out there.”

  Beka ignored that, since he clearly knew that she’d been out in the rain working with the men all this time. She cut to the chase. “I can tell you where the fish are,” she said. “If you’re tired of staring at that empty screen.”

  A little color came into the old fisherman’s face, but he looked unconvinced. “How could you possibly know where the fish are, when even I can’t find them?” He scowled at her.

  “A dolphin told me.”

  Marcus Senior’s mouth dropped open, revealing an uneven set of tobacco-stained teeth. “This is no time for jokes, missy.”

  Beka stared at him, refusing to look away. “No joke. I promise you, I really do know where the fish are. Look at it this way—what do you have to lose by going where I tell you to? It’s not like there are any fish here.” She pointed at the blank radar screen.

  “This is crazy,” the old man said, but he tapped the edge of the wheel with his fingers anyway. “So, where did the dolphin tell you to go?”

  * * *

  WITH MARCUS AND the other two men wrestling the haul of fish into the Serpent’s hold and his father gleefully piloting the ship back toward shore, Beka and Fergus met at the starboard side, away from all the action. The storm had, if anything, picked up in intensity, and the small vessel wallowed in the choppy seas, seeming to make barely any headway as it headed for home.

  “That was risky,” Fergus observed in a mild tone. “You usually work so hard to maintain the illusion of normality; I cannot believe you would take the chance of speaking to dolphins when anyone could see.”

  Beka shrugged, so wet she thought she might turn into a Merperson herself if they didn’t get back to land soon. “You know Humans; they’ll find a rational explanation for anything they can’t readily understand. And there are plenty of stories of sailors who are helped by dolphins.” She sighed. “I know I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t like the way Mr. Dermott was looking, and he wasn’t going to take us in until he’d caught some fish or the sun fell into the ocean.”

  Fergus was silent for a moment, looking out at the water through knowing eyes. “Baba, I do not like this storm. There is something . . . uncanny . . . about it.”

  She bit her lip. She would have liked to have disagreed with the Merman, but she’d been thinking the exact same thing herself.

  “It does have a malicious feel to it, doesn’t it?” she said, peering out across the open seas as if she could see through the roiling clouds and livid waves to whatever—or whoever—had caused them. “But who could create such a storm, and why would they do it?”

  The faintest trace of webbing was visible between Fergus’s fingers as he pushed sopping hair back from his forehead. “It seems to have worsened since this morning, and no one else is mad enough to be out. Perhaps it is aimed at this boat, or someone on it.” He smiled slyly at her. “A Baba Yaga could make such a tempest.”

  “I’d hardly try to sink the ship while I was on it,” Beka said. “Although if Marcus was out by himself and I was onshore, I could see why you might be suspicious.” A tiny laugh slipped through tense lips. “So who besides me could do it? As far as I know, there are no other Babas anywhere around, so that means someone else supernatural.”

  Fergus looked uncharacteristically grim. “The Queen of the Otherworld could do it without dropping a stitch of her knitting.”

  “Yes, but why would she?” Beka asked, trying to envision the ethereally beautiful and dangerously unpredictable High Queen of the Otherworld doing anything as mundane as playing with yarn. “As far as I know, I haven’t done anything to upset her, and these Humans have nothing to do with her.”

  “Well,” her companion said thoughtfully, “my own Queen could do it, or the King of the Selkies, or a few of the more powerful magicians of our kingdoms. But I cannot imagine what reasons any of those would have to send such a deluge either.”

  A particularly assertive wave curled itself over the side and lashed at them with bitterly cold fingers. The old boat rocked unhappily, its timbers creaking. Beka shivered.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I’m going to have to do something about this, or we’re never going to make it back to the shore.” Apprehension chilled her even further; weather magic wasn’t her strongest suit. Visions of a silver submarine, slowly tumbling to the ocean floor, threatened to weaken her resolve.

  “Thank Manannán,” Fergus said with a heartfelt sigh. “I thought you would never offer.”

  Beka gave a shaky laugh. “What are you worried about? You can always jump overboard and return to your natural shape.”

  He shook his head violently. “And explain to my Queen that I let the Baba Yaga drown? No, thank you very much. You can take care of a little squall like this; I have seen you surf higher waves without effort or fear.”

  She snorted, feeling inexplicably buoyed by his unshakable faith in her abilities. “Okay, okay.” She peered around the deck; it looked as though Marcus’s father was still in the cabin, and the others were occupied with their fish-wrangling duties. “Why don’t you go keep an eye out, and make sure no one comes over here while I’m doing my thing?”

  Fergus nodded, and walked toward the stern, leaving Beka to gaze out over the pewter-colored sea. She stiffened her spine and reminded herself that water was her element. And she was a Baba Yaga, dammit. The natural world was hers to command. Hopefully there were no submarines down there anywhere . . .

  She closed her eyes, ignoring for a moment the sway of the deck and the bite of the spray. Throwing her arms up in the air, she pulled power from her core, visualizing it glowing yellow like the unseen sun and sending it dancing out amid the pelting raindrops. Farther and farther, her magic pulsed out from the boat in every direction—out and up and down, calming the wind, soothing the ocean, singing a lullaby of comfort to the angry clouds above.

  A whistling babble of dolphin voices prompted her to open her eyes again. Next to the boat, a pod of about a dozen lithe gray bodies frolicked in a sedate sea, the blue-green surface reflecting the sunlight as it broke through the dispersing clouds. Beka let out a sigh almost as gusty as the vanishing winds. She’d done it!

  “Wow,” said a voice behind her, and she spun around to see Marcus coming around the curve of the boat, Fergus at his heels. The Merman looked relieved when he saw Beka leaning casually against the side. Probably because he couldn’t see her shaky knees.

  “I can’t believe how fast that storm blew over,” Marcus continued, scanning the horizon with one hand over his eyes. Even soaking wet and covered with fish scales, Beka thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. You’re an idiot, Beka Yancy. He can’t stand you, you can’t stand him, and yet you can’t stop mooning over him. Get a grip. She braced herself for him to start yelling at her again.

  But it didn’t happen.

  Instead, he took a deep breath and said, “I owe you an apology.”

  Beka nearly fell over. “What?” she said. Maybe quieting the storm had done something to damage her ears.

  Marcus gritted his teeth. “You heard me. I’m sorry for yelling at you before.” He paused, probably trying not to do it again. “You startled me, climbing over the side like that. I was, well, I was worried about you. And when I’m upset, I yell.”

  He nodded his head in Fergus’s direction. “Your boyfriend here reminded me that you are an experienced diver and surf
er, and you wouldn’t have done something like that if you hadn’t been sure you could do it safely. I still don’t understand how dolphins could possibly have told you where we could find fish. It sounds like something out of the ridiculous stories my da used to tell us when we were kids. But since we’ve got a hold full of fish, I can’t exactly argue with the results.” He shrugged, massive shoulders moving up and down like a mountain during an earthquake. “So I’m sorry, and thank you. I still think you’re a crazy woman, but I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  Beka blinked. “That’s one of the worst apologies I’ve ever heard, but I’ll accept it.” She laughed and added, “And Fergus isn’t my boyfriend; he’s just a surfing buddy who offered to lend a hand.”

  An unreadable expression crossed Marcus’s craggy face, and he opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by Kenny, who appeared from the front of the boat, looking alarmed. His waterlogged tee shirt clung to his skinny chest, the beer logo on the front slowly bleeding red dye into the white cotton expanse behind it.

  “Marcus! Marcus!” Kenny skidded to a stop in front of the larger man. “Come quick! Your father collapsed—I’m not sure he’s breathing.”

  EIGHT

  MARCUS SIPPED AT the cup of insipid hospital coffee and resisted the temptation to get up and pace around the drab, almost empty cafeteria. Its beige walls, beige tables, and beige food were getting on his nerves.

  His father was still in the emergency room, being treated for exhaustion and dehydration, but otherwise fine. They’d both had to suffer through a lecture on chemotherapy patients not overdoing things from a resident who looked about sixteen, and then Marcus’s father had unceremoniously kicked him out of the treatment room.

  “There’s no need for you to sit around and watch fluids drip into my arm,” Marcus Senior had said in his usual tactful manner. “Go down to the cafeteria and ogle a nurse or something. You’re getting on my nerves.”